Philip Friedman

Ex-federal prosecutor Michael Ryan has been estranged from his twenty-seven-year-old son Ned for three years when Ned is murdered. His daughter-in-law, wealthy socialite Jennifer Kneeland Ryan, has been indicted for the crime —- Ned was bludgeoned to death in the private room of a Soho art gallery. Jennifer insists she's innocent and begs her father-in-law to defend her. Ryan wants to believe she's guilty, to bury his grief for the son he hardly knew and get on with his life, but he can't turn her away. He agrees to take the case. Teetering on an emotional precipice himself, Michael Ryan dusts off his rusty legal skills in the most sensational New York murder trial in decades. And as his ambivalence about Jennifer intensifies, as the painful truth about his son's life begins to emerge, Ryan realizes that his own life is also on trial —- as a father, as a lawyer, and as a man.

The New York police seize more than a million dollars tainted with heroin powder, implicating two elderly and distinguished Chinatown residents. Their case is rushed before the grand jury. Susan Linwood and David Clark are strangers before being asked to serve in the name of justice. Yet as prosecuter Dan Mahoney presents the drug-conspiracy case, they soon become completely absorbed with the proceedings - and increasingly with each other. As Mahoney struggles with facts that refuse to fit the crimes his superiors have told him to pursue, Linwood and Clark are launched onto a treacherous path to Hong Kong and China, to the edge of disaster - uncovering an ultimate truth with chilling, worldwide implications.

From the author of REASONABLE DOUBT and GRAND JURY, a crime novel in which young widower Ben Kaplan, chief of the Major Crimes unit in the US Attorney's New York office, is trying to rebuild his life and care for his five year old daughter. Then he becomes involved with a case which has implications for his new life and recently formed friendships.